What a morning.
I know this quote has been shared and reshared ad infinitum, but it gives me hope today, and I hope it will do the same for you:
“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” Fred Rogers
You will always find people who are helping.
Some slightly disconnected thoughts:
Going forward, I don’t know that I want my private conversations to be accessible by any third party. Privacy and security were always important, but feel like even more of a necessity today. If you want to contact me, going forward the best option is Signal, the open source end-to-end encrypted chat app. I’ve been using it for years, but now I’d like to convince more of you to join me. My username is benwerd.01. There’s a Signal link at the bottom of every page on my website; if you have Signal, you can click here to contact me. I’d love to chat.
The first thing I posted this morning was a call to action for journalists: “your job, now more than ever, is to speak truth to power”. On every platform, I received replies that indicate a lack of trust in journalism that I think is well-earned. People believe that journalism has generally served to preserve the status quo rather than illuminate the needs and lives of the people who need it. At its worst, it’s carried water for nationalist movements in the false pursuit of balance. While I think there are exceptions — I’m proud to work for ProPublica, which I believe is one, and I think fondly of The 19th, Grist, The Marshall Project, Rest of World and others — I also think this is largely true. Many news institutions have fully abdicated their responsibility. The others (perhaps all of them?) need to listen to their non-managerial workforces and make cultural changes to make themselves truly representative of the communities they want to reach and serve.
I’ve been thinking about pulling down my whole website and scrubbing it from the Internet Archive. I no longer know if what I’m saying here is helpful or if it’s additive in any way. I’m wondering about refocusing on more proactive rather than reactive modes of communication. I also don’t know — for all the talk about freedom of speech — that there won’t be retaliation for advocating for certain values or for working where I do. I wouldn’t truly go away if I did this, but I’d publish in a different way. I floated this idea on Mastodon, and I think I’ve been convinced not to, at least for now; publishing is an act of protest.
For many people in America — women, trans people, immigrants, people of color, people who are gay, anyone who is not in the in-group — there are safe regions and unsafe regions. It’s not even about states, but local state rules obviously do matter (for example, Austin might feel safer than Dallas, but Texan reproductive health rules still apply). As of this morning, I find myself living in a red state for the first time in my life. As I walked to daycare this morning, past the local elementary school, I passed a woman in a camo MAGA hat; someone who was willing to vote against the interests of at least half of the children in the building she was outside. She voted for a politician who said school shootings were a fact of life. We need to protect the safe spaces. We need more spaces to be safe. I need to be able to create safe spaces for others.
I love my friends and I want them to be safe.
The stock market rose this morning. I understand what that means and I don’t know what to do with it.
I saw a number of comments this morning (particularly in local Facebook groups) along the lines of, “I’m grateful we stopped the communist invasion”. The idea that the Democrats are anything close to communist is ludicrous, but I don’t know how we deal with this perception that what people are asking for — healthcare, civil rights, welfare — is some kind of extremist position. These things would simply bring America in line with the benefits citizens of every other developed nation enjoy. You can intellectually interrogate it, but I don’t think that’s helpful. How do you actually swing people around? Can you? Is it a pipe dream to make America a tolerable democratic nation?
I used to work at a startup accelerator, Matter, where we’d start our demo days with a speech that said: “stories define us”. I think that’s right. (It went on to say “technology empowers us” and, to be frank with you, I’m no longer sure about that line.) Stories teach us what it means to be human and elevate lived experiences. Some are simply the stories of real peoples’ lived experiences; that is journalism, which continues to be incredibly integral to democracy, despite the abdications of its management. Other stories are art that is crafted to shine a light. Camus said, “fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth,” and I truly believe it. Every story, every heartfelt piece of fiction, is a real thing that can’t be taken away from us. Stories define us. They are rebellion. We should tell more stories.
All that we have is each other. We rise together or we fall together. Today feels like a fall. But we can still rise.